Manchester, U.K. – Mad for Music

Like pilgrims flocking to the Holy Land, Smiths fans travel for days to be here. No distance is too great for true devotees, who cross oceans and time zones to reach this temple of popular culture. I’m at the Salford Lads Club in Greater Manchester, a Victorian youth centre immortalized by The Smiths in 1986, when the band used it as a backdrop to shoot the album sleeve for The Queen Is Dead.  Since then fans have come in droves to recreate that iconic shoot, striking Smiths poses for photographs that can be found on bedroom walls from Peru to Portugal, Korea to Canada. “It’s a World Heritage Site,” claims Leslie Holmes, a volunteer at the youth club. That might be pushing it, but this iconic building certainly has cultural significance. Standing before it I feel a sense of occasion and pose for the obligatory photo.

Leslie ushers me inside to show me the dusty weightlifting room he has transformed into a Smiths shrine. The walls are covered with posters, handwritten notes from fans and photographs of people posturing in front of the building. There are giant collages, pictures of Morrissey lookalikes and photos of devotees recreating various album covers.

“It’s basically a small museum to The Smiths,” says Leslie, the curator of this fascinating collection, who, curiously, is not a fan of the band. “We get people from the U.S., South America, China and Japan; in fact, I can’t think of a single country we haven’t had visitors from.”

Cradle of creativity

This corner of Greater Manchester is just part of the story. For the discerning music lover, this city stirs your soul at every corner. Sure, it’s not the only British town with a rich music heritage; nearby Liverpool gave the world The Beatles; Birmingham produced Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin; and London lays claim to The Rolling Stones, the Sex Pistols and countless more. But for a child of the eighties like me, it’s Manchester that really resonates. This is a city that within a decade spawned not only The Smiths, but Joy Division, New Order, Inspiral Carpets, Happy Mondays, The Charlatans, The Stone Roses and James and Oasis. These bands – along with local DJ’s who imported techno from New York and Detroit – fused alternative and psychedelic rock with electronic dance music. They called it Madchester and it was the soundtrack of their generation.

So how did England’s third city, an industrial town in the north, become such fertile ground for music? “The rain,” says Inspiral Carpets drummer, Craig Gill. “It was the rain that powered the cotton mills in Manchester and when they closed down there were all these empty factories.” These vacant, red brick buildings were transformed into recording studios, music venues and nightclubs like Hacienda and Boardwalk. They became cradles of creativity; places to play music, take drugs and forget about unemployment in a city that was in a steep industrial decline. Today most of these old haunts have been claimed by the wrecking ball or turned into New York-style warehouse apartments. Gentrification won out in the end and progress conquered. Small plaques acknowledge some of the more significant venues, paying silent respect to a bygone epoch.

It’s only recently that Manchester has allowed itself to become retrospective about that golden age. Perhaps looking back was to admit those heady days had gone. Or perhaps the city just had a hangover. Either way, Craig is helping the city cast a nostalgic eye over its music heritage. In between touring with Inspiral Carpets he runs music tours of Manchester, taking clients to local landmarks and regaling them with anecdotes. “Noel Gallagher was our roadie back in the day,” he says, as we walk down cobbled streets remembering the nineties. “I met him in the Hacienda and we started hanging out and following the Happy Mondays together. He wasn’t a big drinker back then – three cans of lager and he was drunk.”

Within a few years Noel went from being Inspiral’s lackie to fronting Oasis with his brother Liam. Craig claims much of the credit for their global success. “They owe us everything,” he jokes. “We taught Noel how not to do things.”

Modern Manchester

Despite Craig’s nostalgic music tours, which really are great fun, Manchester isn’t trading on past glories. Neither is it wallowing in post de-industrialization. The once defunct docks at Salford Quays, for instance, are now home to the impressive Imperial War Museum and The Lowry, a fabulous arts and theatre complex, which hosts shows, concerts and a permanent exhibition dedicated to L.S. Lowry, famous for his paintings of industrial Britain during the 20^th century.

The regenerated Salford Quays is also home to the BBC’s swanky new Media City, which opened in 2011. Visitors can get a peek into the workings of the organization on one of its five weekly tours, which have won various awards.

Other areas of the city have also benefitted from regeneration. The void left by the textile industry has been filled with bars, restaurants and clubs at Deansgate Locks and the Northern Quarter. Beautiful young things can be seen sipping drinks and shaking their bums in these hedonistic hotspots. The latter attracts a more bohemian crowd, who are lured by the independent boutiques and record stores, as well as the nightlife.

For my musical purchases, though, Craig takes me to Sifters Records in Burnage, whose eponymous owner, Mr Sifter, sold music to the Gallagher brothers back in the day. Oasis, whose debut album Definitely Maybe turns 20 this year, immortalized the modest merchant in their single Shakermaker, with the lyrics: “Mr Sifter sold me songs when I was just 16.”

Sifter tells me the good times are over now that everyone is downloading, but he’s buoyed by Britain’s vinyl renaissance.

With a bag full of records, Craig and I head back into town. Enroute we pass the neighborhood where Noel and Liam’s mum still lives as well as old haunts from the Madchester days, buildings that were incubators of local talent. “That’s where the Stone Roses used to play shows,” says Craig, pointing ruefully to what is now a Turkish supermarket. “We have so much music heritage here, but keeping hold of it is difficult.”

The international dialing code for Manchester is +44 followed by 161.